On Friday, Ontario Education Minister Liz Sandals sent her congratulations to the elementary school girls whose wish to highlight gay rights put them in the centre of controversy.

“I would like to congratulate Quinn Maloney-Tavare and Polly Hamilton on the receipt of an award from the Canadian Centre for Gender and Diversity,” Sandals said by email. “In Ontario, we believe in a safe and inclusive school environment where all students feel safe and accepted, and I’m proud to see these students putting this belief into practice.”

The girls’ story went viral late last year after the principal at St. George Elementary School in Ottawa told them that they couldn’t do a project on gay rights for the school’s social justice fair. Julian Hanlon, director of education at the Ottawa Catholic School Board, said at the time that principal Ann Beauchamp “had some concerns about the age-appropriateness of the material the kids wanted to present.”

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The school board chair, Ted Hurley, later reviewed the matter, saying, “We support the students’ sense of fair play and respect for all persons.” The girls were invited, with their parents, to meet with the principal and resolve the issue.

That meeting and others led, indirectly, to the creation of a gay-straight alliance, a support organization whose creation at publicly funded schools is now supported by Ontario law. But, according to Jeremy Dias, founder and head of the Canadian Centre of Gender and Diversity, which will honour the girls, St. George’s alliance will be the first at a Catholic elementary school in Canada.

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“This is a huge accomplishment, because it recognizes the work of young people in addressing discrimination and bullying in schools,” he said.

Ann Maloney, Quinn Maloney-Tavares’s mother, said after meeting with officials, the girls agreed to do their project on how gay rights were addressed by a Catholic high school’s equity club. Quinn and Polly visited a gay-straight alliance at All Saint’s High School in Kanata and asked for support to set up one at their own school.

That process is just beginning. Maloney said the girls were inspired to set up the alliance after learning about the Gay Sweater, the project made of the hair of hundreds of members of the LGBTQ community, meant to address the harm that using expressions such as “that’s so gay” can do.

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“The girls were saying they often heard people say ‘That’s so gay.’ They just wanted to change the way people talked.”

Maloney said both Quinn and Polly were affected by the uproar around their request to do a social justice project on gay rights and the reaction to it. They received support but also criticism.

“There was a loss of innocence. They realized there are grownup people who don’t see the world the same way that they see it.”

Polly’s mother Kate Hamilton said she has learned a lot from her daughter during this experience.

“I am proud of her. I think she is proud of herself.”

A spokesperson for the Ottawa Catholic School Board said most students between grades 7 and 12 have access to a gay-straight alliance, but the one set up by the girls is the first at a K-6 elementary school.

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